Day 5: Saying Goodbye

Even after all the festivities of the night before, the girls were ready surprisingly early Saturday morning and had their bags packed before breakfast. You could say they were ready to go home, but I think most of them were more ready to get back on the highway and find signal for their cellphones. 4 nights without phone calls and text messaging was not easy for some of the self-proclaimed phone addicts.

At breakfast we happily chowed down on pancakes (accompanied by gallo pinto, of course) and donned our brand new Camp GLOW t-shirts. Girls went from table to table, chair to chair, sharing cell numbers and Facebook profile names. Saying good-bye is just a little easier when you know you can find someone online or text them later.

Post-breakfast we rallied the troops for a big group photo of everyone plus a photo of all the Peace Corps volunteers and the counterparts we worked with from PLAN Nicaragua. Girls got in on the photo taking and it lasted another half an hour (or at least it felt that long). Fortunately, we had premeditated that girls would want to pose with everyone for photos and had an hour on the agenda for it!

Sadly, that was it – it was time to do one last cabin sweep, return the last forgotten notebook or scarf, pack up extra materials, and head our separate ways. Most girls agreed the ending was bittersweet: they were sad to leave new friends and the fun of camp, but relieved to go home after so many nights away.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally left camp a mixture of elated that it had happened, proud of how well the girls had done, inspired by the work everyone put into it, excited for what’s to come, and on the brink of exhausted from a packed 5 days.